“Saint Oswald’s arm?” I almost laughed.
“Abbot Eadred found it,” Gisela said drily.
“Dug it out of a pauper’s graveyard, more like,” I said.
J?nberht bristled. “All has been done,” he said, “according to the laws of man and of the holy church. The woman,” he looked sneeringly at Gisela, “is married.”
There was something about his narrow, supercilious face that irritated me, so I reached out and grasped his tonsured hair. He tried to resist, but he was feeble and I jerked his head forward and down, then brought my right knee up hard so that his face was smashed into the mail of my thigh.
I hauled him upright and looked into his bloody face. “Is she married?”
“She is married,” he said, his voice thickened by the blood in his mouth, and I jerked his head down again and this time I felt his teeth break against my knee.
“Is she married?” I asked. He said nothing this time, so I yanked his head down again and felt his nose being crunched on my mail-clad knee. “I asked you a question,” I said.
“She is married,” J?nberht insisted. He was shaking with anger, wincing with pain, and the priests were protesting at what I was doing, but I was lost in my own abrupt rage. This was my uncle’s tame monk, the man who had negotiated with Guthred to make me a slave. He had conspired against me. He had tried to destroy me and that realization made my fury ungovernable. It was a sudden blood-red anger, fed by the memory of the humiliations I had suffered on Sverri’s
The monks and priests shrieked like women. They had been appalled when I had hammered J?nberht’s face, but none had expected outright murder. Even I was surprised by what my anger had done, but I felt no regret, nor did I see it as murder. I saw it as revenge and there was an exquisite pleasure in it. Every pull on Sverri’s oar and every blow I had taken from Sverri’s crewmen had been in that sword-cut. I looked down at J?nberht’s dying twitches, then up at his companion, Brother Ida. “Is Gisela married?” I demanded of him.
“Under church law,” Ida began, stammering slightly, then he paused and looked at Wasp-Sting’s blade. “She is not married, lord,” he went on hurriedly, “until the marriage is consummated.”
“Are you married?” I asked Gisela.
“Of course not,” she said.
I stooped and wiped Wasp-Sting clean on the skirts of J?nberht’s robe. He was dead now, his eyes still showing the surprise of it. One priest, braver than the rest, knelt to pray over the monk’s corpse, but the other churchmen looked like sheep confronted by a wolf. They gaped at me, too horrified to protest. Beocca was opening and closing his mouth, saying nothing. I sheathed Wasp-Sting, took Serpent-Breath from Gisela and together we turned toward her brother. He was staring at J?nberht’s corpse and at the blood that had splashed across the floor and onto his sister’s skirts, and he must have thought I was about to do the same to him, for he put a hand to his own sword. But then I pointed Serpent-Breath at Ragnar. “This is the Earl Ragnar,” I said to Guthred, “and he’s here to fight for you. You don’t deserve his help. If it were up to me you’d go back to wearing slave shackles and emptying King Eochaid’s shit-pail.”
“He is the Lord’s anointed!” Father Hrothweard protested. “Show respect!”
I hefted Wasp-Sting. “I never liked you either,” I said.
Beocca, appalled at my behavior, thrust me aside and offered Guthred a bow. Beocca looked pale, and no wonder, for he had just seen a monk murdered, but not even that could put him off his glorious task of being the West Saxon ambassador. “I bring you greetings,” he said, “from Alfred of Wessex who…”
“Later, father,” I said.
“I bring you Christian greetings from…” Beocca tried again, then squealed because I dragged him backward. The priests and monks evidently thought I was going to kill him, for some of them covered their eyes.
“Later, father,” I said, letting go of him, then I looked at Guthred. “So what do you do now?” I asked him.
“Do?”
“What do you do? We’ve taken away the men guarding you, so you’re free to go. So what do you do?”
“What we do,” it was Hrothweard who answered, “is punish you!” He pointed at me and the anger came on him. He shouted that I was a murderer, a pagan, and a sinner and that God would take his vengeance on Guthred if I were allowed to remain unpunished. Queen Osburh looked terrified as Hrothweard screamed his threats. He was all energy and wild hair and spluttering passion as he shouted that I had killed a holy brother. “The only hope for Haliwerfolkland,” he ranted, “is our alliance with ?lfric of Bebbanburg. Send the Lady Gisela to Lord ?lfric and kill the pagan!” He pointed at me. Gisela was still beside me, her hand clutching mine. I said nothing.
Abbot Eadred, who now looked as old as the dead Saint Cuthbert, tried to bring calm to the church. He held his hands aloft till there was silence, then he thanked Ragnar for killing Kjartan’s men. “What we must do now, lord King,” Eadred turned to Guthred, “is carry the saint northward. To Bebbanburg.”
“We must punish the murderer!” Hrothweard intervened.
“Nothing is more precious to our country than the body of the holy Cuthbert,” Eadred said, ignoring Hrothweard’s anger, “and we must take it to a place of safety. We should ride tomorrow, ride north, ride to the sanctuary of Bebbanburg.”
Aidan, ?lfric’s steward, sought permission to speak. He had come south, he said, at some risk and in good faith, and I had insulted him, his master, and the peace of Northumbria, but he would ignore the insults if Guthred were to take Saint Cuthbert and Gisela north to Bebbanburg. “It is only in Bebbanburg,” Aidan said, “that the saint will be safe.”
“He must die,” Hrothweard insisted, thrusting a wooden cross toward me.
Guthred was nervous. “If we ride north,” he said, “Kjartan will oppose us.”
Eadred was ready for that objection. “If the Earl Ragnar will ride with us, lord, then we shall survive. The church will pay Earl Ragnar for that service.”
“But there will be no safety for any of us,” Hrothweard shouted, “if a murderer is permitted to live.” He pointed the wooden cross at me again. “He is a murderer! A murderer! Brother J?nberht is a martyr!” The monks and priests shouted their support, and Guthred only stopped their clamor by remembering that Father Beocca was an ambassador. Guthred demanded silence and then invited Beocca to speak.
Poor Beocca. He had been practicing for days, polishing his words, saying them aloud, changing them, and then changing them back. He had asked advice on his speech, rejected the advice, declaimed the words endlessly, and now he delivered his formal greeting from Alfred and I doubt Guthred heard a word of it, for he was just looking at me and at Gisela, while Hrothweard was still hissing poison in his ear. But Beocca droned on, praising Guthred and Queen Osburh, declaring that they were a godly light in the north and generally boring anyone who might have been listening. Some of Guthred’s warriors mocked his speech by making faces or pretending to squint until Steapa, tired of their cruelty, went to stand beside Beocca and put a hand on his sword hilt. Steapa was a kind man, but he looked implacably violent. He was huge, for a start, and his skin seemed to have been stretched too tight across his skull, so leaving him incapable of making any expressions other than pure hatred and wolfish hunger. He glared around the room, daring any man to belittle Beocca, and they all stayed silent and awed.
Beocca, of course, believed it was his eloquence that stilled them. He finished his speech with a low bow to Guthred, then presented the gifts Alfred had sent. There was a book which Alfred claimed to have translated from Latin into English, and maybe he had. It was full of Christian homilies, Beocca said, and he bowed as he presented the heavy volume that was enclosed in jeweled covers. Guthred turned the book this way and that, worked out how to unclasp the cover and then looked at a page upside down and declared it was the most valuable gift he had ever received. He said the same of the second gift, which was a sword. It was a Frankish blade and the hilt was of silver and the pommel was a chunk of bright crystal. The last gift was undoubtedly the most precious, for it was a reliquary of the finest gold studded with bright garnets, and inside were hairs from the beard of Saint Augustine of Contwaraburg. Even Abbot Eadred, the guardian of Northumbria’s holiest corpse, was impressed and leaned forward to touch the glittering gold. “The king means a message by these gifts,” Beocca said.
“Keep it short,” I muttered, and Gisela pressed my hand.
